Dairy Startup Happy Cow Secures Seed Funding To Expand Its Operations

Happy Cow, a startup that aggregates milk from dairy farmers in rural Maharashtra, has secured ₹4 crore (approx. $6,15,000) in its seed funding round from a group of investors.

According to a report from The Economic Times, the investors in this funding round include an unnamed former executive at foreign lender Citibank, serial entrepreneur Mahendra Mehta and a few others.

The funding will reportedly be used by the company to expand its operations. Happy Cow aims to help farmers who suffer owing to erratic demand and supply of milk, poor pricing policy, malpractices of middlemen and negligible support.

The company was founded in November 2017 by Sarad Garodia, former Head of Britannia’s Dairy division. For aggregation of milk, the company has also set up bulk milk collection centers which have facilities such as milk testing, grading, chilling and storage.

The startup has connected procures milk from about 600 farmers across villages in these areas. According to the company, each center enables a collection of about 2000 liters of milk per day.

Within 4 months of operations, the firm has racked up ₹6 crore in revenues and is looking to use the capital to set up to 150 centers over the 2 years. Sarad Garodia said to ET, “We will close this year with about 50 centers at least. Eventually, I’d like Happy Cow Dairy to have set up about 250 centers across key milk producing zones in India.”